Seattle

What a month. We were in Chicago at the beginning of the month, then Seattle, then San Francisco. Alas, I don’t have any photos from the San Francisco trip, so these photos will have to do of Seattle... We were there for Donna’s sister’s wedding. It was muy muy. Very nice when I can actually relax at a wedding.

Here are the photos:

Donna, myself, Jen, Jorge and Jill all took a trip to Chicago last weekend... Check out a few of the snapshots. I don’t promise them to be great art, but, what the heck, it is a blog. Enjoy them on this page.

Zone Communications & Relevant Yellow

BOY, THIS WAS A WEIRD ONE. About two weeks ago, I got a phone call from a woman telling me that I could increase the position of my website on the various search engines by using a nifty new technology her company was hawking.

Though fuzzy on the details, I decided to go for it. At the time, I had no online advertising to speak of, seeing as I had just cut things loose with Party Pop. The price, $60 a month, seemed reasonable, especially since they offered a money-back guarantee.

A few days later, however, problems began. I discovered that the company I signed up with (a Temecula firm called Zone Communications) was not, in fact, the company that would be handing the work. The actual work would be done by a company called Relevant Yellow. And, strangely enough, if you look at Relevant Yellow’s website, the same service that had been sold to me for $60 a month (plus a $60 setup fee) was priced at $20 a month, with no setup fee, by Relevant Yellow.

Confused, and assuming that I was getting something extra for my triple-upsale price, I called Relevant Yellow. As it turned out, I was getting nothing extra. Zone Communications was supposed to be the sales rep for Relevant Yellow, and RY had simply neglected to take down the e-commerce part of its site...

So, I cancelled with Zone Communications and signed up with Relevant Yellow. The whole thing has made me a touch uneasy, as it seems there are so many flakes and weirdos out there selling click-through rates, online ads and SEOs.

Fortunately, Zone Communications stated that they would return my money. We’ll see. I talked to them on Thursday, and nothing has been credited to my account yet. I think I’ll write Zone Communications on Monday and see what’s what.